Apparently there was an atheism vs. God debate between Chris Hedges and Christopher Hitchens last week. Hedges took a liberal Christian view, while Hitchens took the crusading Islamophobic atheist position. It doesn’t sound like it was all that illuminating, however. Perhaps it’s selective reporting that reduces participants to stereotypes. Nevertheless, in the story, Hedges and … Hedges vs. Hitchens

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I received the unfortunate news this morning that Clark Adams has died, and that he took his own life. Clark was a long-time board member of the Internet Infidels (and for many years its public relations director) and a frequent speaker and attendee at atheist, freethought, humanist, and skeptical events. He was a jovial, funny … Clark Adams, RIP

Some years ago I became interested in criticizing the latest mutation of creationism, intelligent design. In 2004, this culminated in the publication of Why Intelligent Design Fails, one of the leading books critical of ID, which I co-edited with Matt Young. Lately I’ve eased off on ID, because I decided that I had said what … Where does this confidence come from?

Guillermo Gonzalez, an astronomer at Iowa State University who is best known as an Intelligent Design proponent, has just been denied tenure. So far it seems unclear what role ID played in this denial, though it’s a real possibility since Gonzalez has been active and reasonably productive in mainstream astronomical research. In the fall of … ID proponent denied tenure

Among those who care, it should be reasonably well-known by now that secularism is in deep trouble within the Muslim world. The Muslim experience with secularism has typically followed what I have called “military secularism,” where reforming constituencies such as military elites have pushed Westernization in order to force their societies to catch up to … Secularism vs. Democracy

Another podcast about An Illusion of Harmony; this time associated with The Scientist.

I’m not sure what to make of this blog post over at TPM. Neoconservative writer Christopher Hitchens says that White House political advisor Karl Rove is an atheist. Hitchens (an atheist himself) told the New Yorker that Rove “is not a believer, and he doesn’t shout it from the rooftops, but when asked, he answers … Karl Rove an Atheist?

Jack Chick just came out with a new tract, “Fairy Tales?”. (And there was much rejoicing. At least among those of us who consider Chick to be great entertainment.) This one is fairly bizarre even by Chick standards. One of the morals of the story seems to be that you should not tell kids about … Jack Chick strikes again

Check out this week’s This Modern World, “If only the Tillmans had faith.” This sort of nonsense shouldn’t be surprising, given increasing evangelical influence within the US military. I can see that there’d be a mutual attraction between military culture and authoritarian religion, but the combination scares me…